The present invention relates to athletic shoes and more particularly to a sole therefor having an outsole tread arrangement to reduce the likelihood of injuries attending fixation.
Typically, athletic shoes for sports such as football or soccer have means on the lower parts of the soles for increasing the traction that the wearer has with the ground. Usually the traction imparting elements are cleats, in the form of studs which protrude downwardly from the sole so that when a wearer puts his weight on the shoe on the ground, the cleats penetrate the surface of the ground. Slippage of the shoe with respect to the ground is thereby minimized.
However, in practice it has been found that there are occasions when slippage of the shoe is desirable. These arise most often in the case of contact sports such as football or soccer in which players collide with one another with regularity. In certain collisions a force is imparted to the lower part of the body and acts to exert a sideways motion on the foot, but given the fixation of the shoe by the cleats, motion of the shoes does not take place. Instead, the force of the collision causes injury to the player, including such injuries as torn ligaments, cartilage or the like. Injuries resulting from this problem are termed fixation injuries.
Several attempts have been made to design athletic shoes to avoid fixation injuries, with limited success. U.S. Pat. No. 3,354,561 to Cameron discloses an athletic shoe sole having a rotatable plate attached to the front portion of the sole with a plurality of cleats affixed to the plate. The heel consists of two arcuate ribs which are provided with beveled ends. The Cameron device has several drawbacks. First, the rotatable plate may rotate at undesired times, leading to loss of control when running and perhaps other injury. In addition, the Cameron sole requires the assembly of numerous parts, increasing production costs.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,619,916 to Neri also discloses an athletic shoe which is intended to avoid fixation injuries. In the Neri patent an athletic shoe is provided with toe and heel cleats and a safety traction block having a plurality of integral, spaced, parallel, laterally extending, sawtooth-like, ground engaging ribs between the toe and heel cleats.